


Tried Letting Go But

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Series: Wicked and Divine [3]
Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:18:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Come As You Are" and "Not Just A Mask". Will Sheldon and Raj's liaison progress any further when the costumes come off, or will the mundanities of everyday life override their growing bond?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tried Letting Go But

**Author's Note:**

> Big Bang Theory characters do not belong to me and I am making no money from this work of fan fiction.
> 
> Many, many thanks to afullmargin for the beta.  
> 
> 
> * * *

It’s been ten days since Comic-Con ended and, in theory, they all came home and went back to normal. Except the problem is that anyone’s definition of “normal” has to change a little when they’ve just spent a long weekend having sex every night with someone who usually exhibits as much interest in sex as the lactose intolerant exhibit in cheese.

Raj is a grown man and he can admit to himself that a large part of what he misses is the sexual contact. Actually, that’s the easy part to deal with. The hard part to deal with is comprised of a lot of things, from missing the way Sheldon uses his full first name when they’re alone together, to being unable to forget what Sheldon said on the first night of the con: _Even if you’re not in the Uhura dress._

What happens at Comic-Con stays at Comic-Con. It’s always been the rule. Always, always, always.

So, why he’s making his way through the Caltech halls at ten-thirty in the morning when he should be in his office working, saying or nodding hello to other workers depending on their gender, is a mystery to him.

There’s still a tacky spot on the door where his name was taped up with Sheldon’s for a while. Raj stares at it for a full minute before knocking, even though the door’s open.

Sheldon doesn’t turn away from the almost blank whiteboard. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” Raj says, and Sheldon does turn around then, his customary look of annoyance at being disrupted vanishing from his face to be replaced with a half-smile. “Can I come in?”

“That depends, is it work-related?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Raj closes the door behind himself. “As long as being unable to work because I can’t stop thinking about Comic-Con counts as work-related.”

Sheldon pushes his sleeves up a little further – they always sneak down his forearms when he’s writing – and caps the marker before he says anything. “I assume you’re not referring to any of the panels.”

“No.”

“Or some article of merchandise you intended to buy but missed out on.”

“ _Sheldon_.”

Sheldon leans against the desk, folding his arms. “I suppose I should have seen this coming.”

“Seen what coming?”

“Your inevitable emotional attachment to me based solely on our physical interactions under... certain circumstances.”

Raj can feel the slow burn of anger building inside him. “You mean when you can’t keep your hands off me if I’m in a dress.”

“You _were_ being intentionally provocative.”

Raj starts looking for something to throw at him. “So now you’re using the good old blame the victim logic? Classy, Sheldon.”

Sheldon blinks at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you felt as though you were a victim in this scenario. You certainly seemed as though you were enjoying yourself.”

Oh, for a paintball gun. Or even a Nerf gun. Hell, he’d settle for a water pistol. “Sheldon, that’s not what I meant. What I meant is that I wasn’t the only one enjoying what we did.”

“No, but you’re the only one who can’t seem to separate that from real life,” Sheldon says, and that’s when Raj launches the tray of paper clips at him. It isn’t much, but with Sheldon’s OCD tendencies it’s like throwing a bag of rice at a vampire. Sheldon’s eyes go wide and Raj chases the paper clips with a bag of rubber bands that bounces right off Sheldon’s forehead and bursts open to scatter everywhere. It’s clearly more surprising than painful, but that’s the point.

“Damn you, Sheldon! Why can’t you have normal emotions like normal people?”

“If it involves going around hurling office supplies at people, I can’t see why I’d want to,” Sheldon says, and he moves to start picking the mess up. Something inside Raj snaps like an overstretched rubber band. He catches Sheldon off guard and brings him to the floor, not sure exactly what he’s going to do once he takes him down, but determined to do it anyway. Somebody’s foot catches the whiteboard and sends it flying and Sheldon shouts in protest and tries to wriggle out from under Raj as markers bounce off both of them.

“Damn it, Koothrappali, get off of me!” Sheldon’s southern drawl has stomped back into his voice with his anger.

Raj clings to him like a horror fan to a new Stephen King novel. “No.” He flattens his body along Sheldon’s, presses his feet against Sheldon’s ankles and his upper body against Sheldon’s chest and catches Sheldon’s flailing wrists with his hands. “Not until you admit this _is_ part of real life.”

Sheldon stills beneath him, his breathing uneven. “You don’t know what you’re asking. You—”

“I’m _asking_ you to acknowledge that you can’t just write off Comic-Con as a mistake!”

Sheldon looks as though Raj just slapped him. “I never said it was a _mistake_. Only that – that what happened between us has no place in our everyday lives. Especially not at work. It’s thoroughly inappropriate!” He wriggles again, but Raj has the advantage of his position and also the fact that Sheldon has the upper body strength of a wet tissue. He shifts his hands on Sheldon’s wrists so that he can lock the fingers of one hand around both wrists, feeling the movement of the fine bones just under the skin, and prop himself up more with the other hand.

“Doesn’t it?”

“I—” Sheldon sees the look on Raj’s face and shuts his mouth.

“Because after Comic-Con and Halloween, I don’t know why we can’t make this... something more.” And Raj bends his head to press his lips against Sheldon’s.

It’s angry and wrong and not the way he’d planned to go about it at all, but to have something so real be dismissed as not-real has his blood boiling. He drives his tongue against Sheldon’s lips and, when they part in surprise, between his teeth, licking roughly at the roof of Sheldon’s mouth. Sheldon jerks beneath him and lets out a sound of surprise; he attempts to twist his hands free, but Raj has them securely pinned to the floor.

Fortunately, people avoid Sheldon’s office.

Raj pulls away after a minute. Sheldon’s eyes are shut, his breathing ragged, his lips reddened from kissing. Raj repositions himself to straddle Sheldon’s thighs so that he can use his free hand to touch the side of Sheldon’s face, to tickle lightly at the sensitive spot just below his ear, and to rub circles on Sheldon’s chest. He can feel Sheldon’s heart pounding through both layers of t-shirt. Raj’s fingers trail down his torso to rest just above his waistband, still rubbing circles through the fabric, and Sheldon arches up to meet his hand.

“Sheldon...”

“Ummm?”

“You’re right, this is totally inappropriate.” Raj lets him go and stands up in one fluid motion. “Especially at work.” And he steps over the whiteboard, glancing back once on his way out of the door to see Sheldon, flustered and aroused and denied, sitting in a mess of paperclips and elastic bands.

He feels horrible and vindicated.

* * *

It’s Chinese night that night, and Sheldon doesn’t complain when Leonard confesses to buying the wrong soy sauce, which makes everyone cast uneasy glances at each other and wait for the inevitable explosion. But Sheldon just eats mechanically and stares at the television and doesn’t scoff about the fact that _Jurassic Park_ got velociraptors wrong and that they really should have been Utahraptors, or any of the other inaccuracies he usually pounces on.

Not surprisingly, everyone bugs out early. Leonard goes across the hall with Penny; Howard and Bernadette get onto the Vespa to go hide from Howard’s mom at Bernadette’s place. Raj slides in behind the wheel of his car and starts the motor.

Except for the part where the motor doesn’t start.

Raj slumps forward and bangs his head lightly on the steering wheel. He has exactly two options: walk home (ten miles, no thanks), or go back upstairs and try to work out the logistics of spending the night at Sheldon’s given the morning’s... incident. Well, he _could_ disturb Leonard and Penny, but, just, no. And he doesn’t like the idea of dealing with finding a mechanic at this time of night any more than he likes the idea of walking home.

Sheldon’s it is, then.

He treks back up the stairs and pauses on the fourth floor landing. Both apartment doors are shut, but he can hear music in Penny’s apartment. There’s no sound at all coming from 4A.

He knocks and waits and then finally the door opens.

“Sheldon, my—”

Sheldon grabs him, pulls him into the apartment, and has him backed up against the closed door before he can finish the sentence. Sheldon’s tongue pushes between his lips and Raj is kissing him back before he can think about it.

When they break apart, Sheldon looks as flustered as he did that morning – and as aroused. Raj can feel the press of Sheldon’s cock against his thigh, and Sheldon’s hands have slipped to his waist, sneaking up under his shirt. His perfectly ordinary shirt, under his perfectly ordinary sweater-vest.

“I thought you were only into me when I’m wearing a dress,” he says, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Sheldon looks down as though he has no idea how his hands got there, and moves to withdraw them. Raj flattens his own hands atop them, outside the layers.

“No. If you want this, then we should do it.”

The breath hitches in Sheldon’s throat. “I told you it wasn’t just about the dress,” he murmurs, beginning to work Raj’s shirt completely free of his pants.

“Then explain to me what it _is_ about, because I’m getting confused.” Raj helps Sheldon along a little by yanking the sweater-vest off and throwing it in the general direction of the couch.

“Rajesh, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s about being someone you’re not... but there’s more to it than that.” Sheldon leans in to kiss the side of Raj’s neck as he pops open Raj’s shirt buttons. His next words are little more than a whisper by Raj’s ear. “I’m afraid.”

Raj stops him, his hands catching Sheldon’s and holding them. “Sheldon, stop. Afraid of _what_?”

Sheldon looks everywhere but at him. “Afraid of not being able to stop.”

“Stop what? This? You don’t have to stop.”

“No. I know that. I just—”

He looks so frustrated and tongue-tied that Raj walks him over to the couch and sits him down in his spot. Sheldon seems to regain a measure of control when he’s settled in the corner. Raj toes off his shoes and tucks his feet under himself as he sits in what he usually thinks of as Penny’s spot.

“I’m not used to feeling this way,” Sheldon says, as though sitting down has loosened his tongue. “ _Homo novus_ doesn’t need other people. Especially not for coitus. He – I just don’t have those urges.”

“Leonard says you schedule masturbation,” Raj points out.

“How would he know?”

“It’s the only time your bedsprings squeak, because when you sleep you don’t move.”

Sheldon sighs. “All right. But I’m not used to wanting anything with another person.”

“Well – what do you think about when you’re masturbating?” He sees the way Sheldon’s eyes flicker to his hands before his eyelids flutter closed, and the tinge of pink that comes to his cheeks. “Tell me.” He rubs one finger along the palm of Sheldon’s right hand and feels the shiver that runs through Sheldon’s body. “ _Tell_ me, Sheldon.”

“You,” Sheldon mumbles.

“When you’re _not_ thinking about me. Before us. What do you want when you don’t want anyone else?”

“I... just do it. I try not to think at all.” Sheldon’s face is even more heated now.

Raj isn’t sure where his next words come from. “Show me.”

Sheldon inhales sharply between slightly parted lips, but his eyes remain closed and his hands move obediently to work his fly open. He pushes his pants and underwear down to mid-thigh, freeing his cock, and runs his palm over it as though refamiliarizing himself with his own body. Raj watches, fascinated, as Sheldon’s fingers curl around himself and he starts a slow pace that Raj personally would find too unbearable.

“Keep your eyes shut,” he says softly, and Sheldon’s lashes flutter again before he dips his head in silent acquiescence. Raj leaves his unbuttoned shirt on but wrestles both of Sheldon’s t-shirts off over his head, disrupting the proceedings. Sheldon looks as if he's going to stop altogether and Raj murmurs, “No, keep going,” before draping the shirts over the end of the couch. Then he stands up, eyes riveted on Sheldon, and unbuckles his belt. Sheldon looks a little uncomfortable, but his hand keeps working on himself, with a little twist every fourth or fifth stroke that makes Raj’s cock twitch hopefully. He unzips his pants, drags them and his briefs down and off, yanking his socks off with them, and then kneels down between the couch and the coffee table.

When his hands land on Sheldon’s thighs, Sheldon just about jumps out of his skin.

“It’s okay, it’s just me.” Raj pulls Sheldon’s pants and briefs the rest of the way off. Sheldon’s movements are getting jerkier, his breathing faster. Raj can see the gleam of precome on the head of his cock as his thumb moves over it and leans in to chase Sheldon’s thumb with his tongue. Sheldon moans and bucks his hips up, and Raj licks at him for a little longer until Sheldon’s thrusting erratically up against his lips.

He pulls back and stands up, and Sheldon blinks up at him.

“Eyes closed,” Raj reminds him, and not only do Sheldon’s eyes close, but his head falls back against the cushion and his fingers tighten on himself. He’s working himself faster now, his left hand digging into the arm of the couch, and Raj takes a moment to admire the view before moving to straddle him, settling astride him so that his cock nudges against Sheldon’s fingers. He’s about to prompt Sheldon, but Sheldon doesn’t need words to be told what to do; he wraps his hand around them both of his own volition, and all Raj has to do is brace one hand against the back of the couch and enjoy the sensation.

“Isn’t it easier to just do this than to be thinking about it all the time when you’re trying to work?” he murmurs against the side of Sheldon’s neck, taking a stab in the dark that he isn’t the only one who’s been distracted by memory and desire. The almost clear whiteboard from this morning is just one clue amongst many. The way Sheldon is so unprotestingly responsive to everything he says is another. “It’s not like we have to be together every night. Just when you want to.” It’s so hard, _so_ hard to talk when Sheldon’s touching him like this, and he’s rapidly finding out that he was wrong about the slow strokes, so he gives up on talking. It’s not as though he’s unused to being silent. Plus, this way he can hear the little whimpery noises Sheldon’s making, and they’re worth it.

Gradually the noises resolve into words. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“Yeah, it is,” Raj says, unsure whether Sheldon’s talking to Raj or to himself. “Better than all right.”

He feels the motion as Sheldon shakes his head. “I mean this is all right. We can do this.”

“Dude, I hope you’re not suggesting you thought we should stop...” Raj rolls his hips inward against Sheldon’s hand.

Sheldon nips his earlobe. “No.” He’s pushing the words out between hitching inhalations. “I mean I can learn to control this, like the rest of my life.” And he closes his hand on the two of them, stops it moving.

Raj could scream with frustration. “Okay, Sheldon, I already said we can do this when _you_ say it’s okay, but you can’t stop _now_.”

Sheldon opens his eyes and the expression in them is pure blue wickedness. “I’m just prolonging the experience,” he says, and Raj goes, “Gnaaaargh,” and bucks into his hand, and this couldn’t possibly be further from Uhura cosplay but Sheldon strokes him all the way through it, his cock jerking hot against Raj’s, come splattering over both their stomachs, and he looks one hundred percent into it.

They shower together in a carefully choreographed dance of soap and shampoo and conditioner and slick wet touching until Sheldon starts complaining about his pruning fingertips, then retreat to the bedroom, Sheldon settling himself in his customary sleeping position and Raj wrapping himself around Sheldon like an extra layer of blanket.

Just before they fall asleep, Sheldon’s arm curls tentatively around Raj’s shoulders.

So it _is_ all right, after all.


End file.
